New Delhi: England captain Ben Stokes slammed the International Cricket Council (ICC) after his side were penalised for slow over rate and docked two World Test Championship (WTC) points after the third Test against India at Lord’s. England won the 3rd Test by 22 runs, taking a 2-1 lead in the ongoing five-match series between the two teams.
The hosts also jumped to the second spot in the WTC 2025-27 points table after their victory. However, they later slipped to the third spot after getting penalised by the ICC. Calling out the existing rules regarding the timing of overs to be bowled in a day during a Test match, Stokes said rules should vary depending on the continent the Test match is being played in.
England were penalised for a slow over rate after managing to complete only 75 overs during Day 2 of the Lord’s Test. The ICC rules stipulate that a total of 90 overs must be bowled in a day during a Test match, and failure to comply attracts a severe penalty, including the deduction of WTC points.
Urging ICC to apply common sense, Stokes argued the timing rules can’t be the same for a Test match in Asia and in England. He explained that the conditions in Asia favour spin and thus spinners bowl more overs, consuming less time. However, in England, pacers dominate and the fast bowlers take more time to complete their overs.
“You can’t have the same rules in Asia, where a spinner is bowling 70% of the overs, to have the same laws in New Zealand, Australia, England, where it’s going to be 70-80% seam. Because the spinner’s over takes less time than the seamer’s over. So common sense would think that you should look at maybe changing how the over-rates are timed in different continents,” Stokes said ahead of the 4th Test between India and England in Manchester.
“Over-rate isn’t something that I worry about, but that’s not saying that I purposely slow things down. I do understand the frustration around it, but I honestly think there needs to be a real hard look at how it’s structured,” he added.
This is not the first time England have been penalised for slow over rate in the World Test Championship. During the last cycle, the team lost as many as 22 points due to fines and penalties related to slow over rate. Stokes also argued that injury to spinner Shoaib Bashir was one of the reasons behind England failing to complete overs in time during the Lord’s Test.
The England captain said Bashir’s injury forced the hosts to continue bowling pacers nearly throughout the day, which slowed down the proceedings. He also insisted that the players get tired over the course of a Test match, thus things tend to slow down as the game progresses.
“Throughout the course of a game, the time of overs is going to come down because you’ve just got tired bodies. We played five days, that was our 15th day of cricket. We obviously had an injury to Bash [Bashir], a spinner, so we couldn’t turn to our spinner as much as we would have liked to on Day Five. So we had to throw a seam at them for pretty much the whole day. That’s obviously going to slow things down,” said Stokes.